SHAH ALAM: The government, through the Cooperative Commission of Malaysia (CCM), has launched 'Kebun Korperasi Keluarga Malaysia' to promote farming and agricultural activities in urban areas.
Entrepreneur Development and Cooperatives (Medac) Minister Tan Sri Noh Omar said Korperasi Kebuniti Selangor Berhad (Kobuniti) has shown the way for a systematic urban farming scheme with the establishment of Kobuniti Agro Park near Sesyen U12 here recently.
Kobuniti came up with a community farming model known as 'Plot Kebun Keluarga Malaysia' which allows poor people in the B40 category to be involved. Each participant is allocated 200 square feet of food plot.
"We welcome more cooperatives to follow the same model where they can sponsor the plots to be farms.
"A portion of the profit will be shared with the cooperatives," he said at a press conference today.
Apart from producing food products, Noh said that it will also ease the people's burden by enabling them to purchase items at a cheap price.
This is because customers can pick the food products and directly pay at the farm, cutting out the middlemen who cause high price of products, he said.
Kobuniti has received RM500,000 worth of grant from Economic Planning Unit (EPU) to be channeled via CCM to implement urban farming.
Kobuniti also received RM80,000 aid from CCM to finance the cost of renovating training centres related to urban farming.
Also present was Kobuniti chairman Tan Sri Abu Kassim Mohamed.